Table 2 Millennium Goal 7 targets c and d

Accessibility, Acceptability and Quality/Safety) 16 and OPERA (Outcomes, Policy Efforts, Resources and Assessment) 17 frameworks.

2.2 The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6 – ‘The Water Goal’

The modern concept of sustainable development emerged in the 1980s as the need for environmental protection was recognised in the practices of development planning around the world (Cobbinah et al., 2015) Widely used definition of sustainable development is by Brundtland Commission, which defines it as development that “[meets] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Satterthwaite, 1997). With the global warming and the climate change, various problems appearing in this urbanising world, sustainable development was perceived as a paradigm shift and a new notion of development (Du Pisani, 2006). In 2002, the United Nations (n.d.) started the Millennium Campaign to support and inspire people around the world to take actions for the newly launched Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 18 composed of eight goals on topics such as poverty, environment, health, gender equality and global partnerships, targeting 2015 as a deadline, were developed as a blueprint agreed by UN member states and development institutions with the aim to work together with governments, civil societies and others, in the hope to alleviate extreme poverty. The MDG 7 on Ensure Environmental Sustainability contains targets relevant to water and sanitation and improving the living conditions for slum dwellers (targets 7.c and 7.d), as shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Millennium Goal 7 targets c and d

Target Description

Target 7.c To halve the proportion of the universal population without sustainable access to clean and safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.

16 The Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) has contextualised the AAAQ indicators for the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation. The manual was published in 2014, available at: https://www.humanrights.dk/publications/aaaq-framework-right-water-international-indicators

17 The OPERA Framework was initiated by the Centre for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) in 2012, with the aim to fulfil economic, social and cultural rights. Available at: https://www.cesr.org/sites/default/files/the.opera_.framework.pdf

18 More information can be found here: https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

Target 7.d To achieve substantial improvement in the lives of a minimum of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.

Source: https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/environ.shtml

Although the eight MDGs in general sound like ambitious life-changing goals for the poor and the world, there have been numerous criticisms regarding its targets and indicators, and the measurements of their claimed achievements. One of them is (Satterthwaite, 2016) who has criticised the criteria for defining ‘improved provision’ for water and sanitation in urban and rural areas, as well as the statistical base for measuring and monitoring the progress on the MDG target for water and sanitation are inadequate, due to their very different conditions between the rural and the urban, which then leads to an understatement of such problems in urban areas. What works in rural areas might not necessarily work in urban areas because of the different contexts, and this was shown in a review of the statistics for water piped on premises and improved sanitation on changes to coverage from 1990 to 2015 that targets were not being met for urban populations in many nations (Satterthwaite, 2016). Moreover, the lack of regular reporting of the households living in slums and the lack of data gathering systems in low- and middle-income nations decreases the credibility of the reported collected data. According to the reports by the UN, there had been billions of people who gained access to ‘improved’ water and sanitation between the period of 1990 and 2015, and the MDG targets were reached 5 years before the deadline; however, (Weststrate et al., 2019) have criticised that the figures UN provided related to water and sanitation may have been too optimistic and further questioned whether the progress towards MDG target 7.c had been sustainable and equitable. In the MDG period, governments around the world, especially of the low- and middle-income nations, seemed to have failed to invest effectively in the provision of water and sanitation infrastructure, to expand piped network and to protect the public against health risks and pollution of the environment (Weststrate et al., 2019). Additionally, there also seem to lack consistent data that clearly explains to what extent governments have failed or succeeded, as well as the limitations of the household surveys with interviewers that potentially lack of technical qualifications to judge the current or ‘improved’ water and sanitation infrastructure (Satterthwaite, 2016; Weststrate et al., 2019). Following the MDGs are the current seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)19, as part of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

19 More information can be found here: https://sdgs.un.org/goals